I first met Paul in 1990. We both worked at VNU, which meant that in 1990 we were both on strike from VNU. Paul used to camp out in strike headquarters (the top room of the Blue Posts on Berwick Street, except Tuesdays when the masons had it) and play the guitar, smoke cigarettes and mock the strike’s leaders. Paul was always a complex mixture of sincerity and theatre which confused the politically simple minded.
After the strike ended we went our separate ways but met up again at MacUser three years later. Paul’s genius for the minutiae of technical reporting, low tolerance for bullshit and an even greater genius for mischief helped ensure that dull days were few, and could be made undull rapidly.
Later still I went off to do web dev and put the website for Paul’s band Gretschen Hofner together. In thanks, Paul gave me a copy of Richard Kern’s New York Girls printed by his publishing company, salvaged from a batch that Customs made him pulp for obscenity. It is a prized, if well hidden, possession. This sort of story was normal for Paul.
Paul moved to New Orleans and I ended up working at T-Mobile and we stopped bumping into each other. I’d hoped that we’d get together for a drink and a kvetch sometime in the future. Not to be.
The fact that the world has a Paul-shaped hole in it now is indescribably sad. They don’t make many Pauls and it’s up to us to treasure them while we can.
